Chuck Sweeny: To transform Rockford, we need real jobs

Monday

Dec 16, 2013 at 8:25 PMDec 16, 2013 at 8:25 PM

By Chuck SweenyRockford Register Star

The second Transform Rockford community meeting continued the momentum of the first and demonstrated that residents are indeed serious about making the region a top-25 community in the next two decades.

The first meeting at the Coronado Performing Arts Center drew 1,400. The meeting on Saturday brought at least 1,000 people to Ellis Elementary at South Central Avenue and West State Street, an inconvenient location because West State was still technically under construction, and the Central-State intersection was closed.

It was also a Saturday in the Christmas shopping season and the weather was not good. All things considered, turnout was remarkable.

People had to park their cars two or three blocks away, which gave them a chance to see what has happened to a once-thriving workingman's neighborhood. Many of the houses are vacant. The streets are bumpy. You won't see many Christmas lights. The retail stores that lined State Street near Central and Johnston avenues are long gone. It's beginning to look a lot like ... Flint, Mich.

Why did this negative transformation occur? Corporations closed the factories that employed the people. Those CEOs decided to employ people in China and Mexico at near-slave-labor rates to make inferior versions of the products Rockford workers made. None dare call it treason. That's what it is, though.

It was clear, from the audience members who spoke, that people here are desperate for real jobs, not the McJobs that pay minimum wage at the big-box stores, retail strips and the mall. People can't live on them without relying on food stamps. Is it right to subsidize these stores with taxes so they can underpay their workers?

I wonder sometimes about Rockford-area priorities. We know we have a high unemployment rate. Yet government leaders are excited about spending upward of $50 million to build indoor and outdoor playing fields so that comfortable, middle-class families in Barrington Hills and Overland Park, Kan., can drive to soccer tournaments in Rockford, stay in a chain hotel that pays its help the minimum wage, and buy a pizza and four Cokes.

I am NOT opposed to that project. However, let's say we were just as enthused about taking a similar amount of money and using it to recruit manufacturers and logistics companies to Winnebago County. We could lift thousands out of poverty. That would transform Rockford!

Rock Valley College has a golden opportunity to create hundreds of well-paying jobs at Chicago Rockford International Airport by committing to a much larger aircraft mechanic training program than the one it has had for years. If it does that, the airport will have a ready supply of local workers at the giant hangar it wants to bring here to service the biggest aircraft flying.

Those jobs start at $48,000 a year, and local kids, maybe some from the neighborhood near Ellis School, could work there.

Rock Valley leaders are balking at paying for the bigger program. They need to change their minds - or else be resigned to being part of the problem for decades to come.

We need highly skilled people who stay here and help to transform Rockford. Rock Valley can help. Rockford will have a better quality of life only when our people have enough money to afford one.